NBA All-Star Weekend has outgrown its purpose, but that doesn't mean it can't be saved

NBA All-Star Weekend is done, and people are again proclaiming its death.

Sunday’s All-Star game was the worst I’ve ever seen, but let’s not pretend like the All-Star games of old were must-see TV. It hasn’t been a regularly impactful event in decades, and I’m not sure why people expect otherwise.

The All-Star game was essential back when TV inventory was limited, and many fans could only see their local team in person or a handful of nationally televised games. But as Internet access and TV schedules grew, the biggest stars became more and more accessible. You don’t need an All-Star game to see LeBron James whenever you want; you just need League Pass, a cable package, or even a cellphone equipped with YouTube.

There hasn’t been any novelty to the biggest stars sharing a court in decades, and the players and fans know it, too.

Players are disincentivized to play hard in the All-Star game. The average NBA contract today is literally ten times what it was 30 years ago (far outpacing inflation). In the old days, a good All-Star performance enhanced exposure, potentially leading to more marketing opportunities and merchandise sales. Now, playing in the exhibition is pure risk.

The players reportedly asked for $500K for the winning All-Star team’s crew, like the In-Season Tournament's champion receives, to play harder. But there’s a difference: All-Star rosters have billions in cumulative contracts. Unlike the Play-In Tournament, in which a half-million is a substantial amount of money for more than half of any given team’s lineup (plus the coaches!), $500K is a drop in the bucket for even the lowest-paid All-Star. Players will weigh that incremental money vs. the increased risk of injury that comes with higher effort, a risk that could affect future nine-figure contracts. Which would you choose?

More money can’t hurt, but it won’t solve the issue, particularly in a media and fan environment that prioritizes championships over all else. When even a minor ankle tweak can jeopardize a team’s chance at a championship, the risk isn’t worth it.

I’m also skeptical of tying home-court advantage for the NBA Finals to the winning All-Star conference. Baseball tried the idea and discarded it after widespread fan disapproval. Many players inherently know their team is unlikely to be taking advantage of that prize, so it’s hard to imagine it mattering much to them. We also don’t need to give top-seeded teams yet another reason to rest players down the stretch of the season; if home-court advantage were predetermined by the All-Star game this year, the Boston Celtics (who have an enormous advantage over every other Eastern Conference team in the standings) might start sitting their starters immediately, since their record compared to the top West seed wouldn’t matter.

The All-Star game has rarely been fun in the last 20 years, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be. The game used the Elam ending for four years, from 2020 until last season, and the league seems to have forgotten that both the 2020 contest and the 2022 version were highly enjoyable events:

It was never “real” basketball, but it still had guys playing one-on-one defense, boxing out, and scrambling for loose balls. Didn’t see much of that this year!

I have no idea why Adam Silver moved away from the Elam ending just two years removed from an exciting, next-shot-wins finish. (Perhaps I do; the All-Star game ratings continue to tank, as they have in pretty much every sport). Despite all the handwringing about the integrity of the game, we’ve had two interesting All-Star matches in the last five years. Both were played to a target score.

Here’s an idea: why can’t we do a single-elimination three-on-three tournament? With 24 players, we can do eight teams of three players each. Play the games by twos-and-threes to 15; make them super short. Briefer target-score games have worked for the Rising Stars competition, and I think they would help for the varsity league, too.

The whole thing could be done in an hour. The sneaky trick to this is that three-on-three inevitably leads to a lot of one-on-one or two-on-two situations, and not even the most jaded NBA players are excited about getting destroyed on an island when people are watching. I think effort, particularly given the short duration of the contests, would have to rise (and the teams that don’t care will be eliminated quickly enough that we won’t have to watch them for long!).

And if it doesn’t work after a few years? We could try playing the All-Star game every other year. Picking All-Star rosters is important for legacies, Hall of Fame voting, and player egos. But the game doesn’t matter anymore, particularly if it continues to be an unwatchable mess. If we limit the number of All-Star games, it may become a bigger spectacle again. If players know this might be their best or only chance to play in one during their prime, maybe they’ll try harder.

I feel differently about the dunk contest, which is an important event. Unfortunately, it’s a prisoner of nostalgia.

Seemingly every season, people complain that the dunk contest is dead, even though we’ve had some of the best contests of all time in recent years. Even as a dunk contest apologist, I thought this year’s effort was poor, but it wasn’t all the dunkers’ fault. The judging, crowd energy, and announcing were horrendous (continuing a trend from all weekend; someone, please let Kenny take a vacation during All-Star break next year and put in an analyst who will at least try to hype up the moment). Jacob Toppin never got a chance to show his two best dunks, which was unfortunate, as his spinning through-the-legs jam was criminally underrated. Jaylen Brown was terrible, but he also is why stars will never do this event again: he’s been mercilessly clowned for his poor effort. Why would a significant NBA player want to subject himself to that risk?

We have to take the bad with the good. Nearly all of today’s dunk contests are far superior to older ones, but people remember the reputation of dunk contests far more than the actual events. Most of the dunks done by even Michael Jordan and Dominique Wilkins in their legendary 1988 battle, which I re-watched right now, would get dunkers laughed out of the gym today, a conveyor belt of slightly rehashed windmills and 360s. They weren’t all rehashes back then, of course (although repeat dunks were very common in early dunk contests). What was new and exciting has become trite and commonplace, kind of like jumping over Shaq.

Today’s standards are significantly higher even as the number of original dunks available to people who spend, at most, a second or two in the air continues to decline (there are only so many ways to flail your arms and legs!). The world’s best dunkers aren’t even NBA players; anybody with a phone can check out dunks that even the NBA’s top .01th percentile athletes can’t do.

The best players are rarely the best dunkers, anyway. Would you want to see a Luka Doncic vs. Joel Embiid dunk contest?

I’m certainly not suggesting that dunk creativity has been fully tapped. The Zach LaVine-Aaron Gordon battle of 2016 is the pinnacle of dunk contest performances, and it’s not even a decade old. Gordon vs. Derrick Jones Jr. from 2020 might be nearly as good (and nobody remembers poor Pat Connaughton jumping clean over Giannis Antetokounmpo and tapping the ball off the backboard before dunking). Mac McClung’s effort last year was legendary.

But the sheer nature of the dunk contest means there will always be more duds than successes. I wish people would stop proclaiming that the dunk contest is dead every year. There will be a good one, and soon. Enter every February with low expectations, and you can only be pleasantly surprised.

Besides, the marquee event has been the 3-point competition for some time now*. Big names, players trying hard (because it takes minimal effort, to be fair), and a concise format make it an excellent TV experience. I don’t want to give the shootout short shrift, but there’s nothing to say because nothing needs fixing. And the Steph Curry vs. Sabrina Ionescu event was fantastic theater; perhaps we could expand the WNBA’s participation in the future.

All-Star Weekend has its moments every year, but some years clearly have more moments than others. We can try to tweak the All-Star game to be better, but at the end of the day, managing expectations is the key to happiness.

*I might be the only person in the world who enjoys watching the Skill Competition each year, even if it’s solely to judge who really does have that dawg in him (hi, Wemby!).